Boy claims title of South Bay's first baby of 2013

At less than a day old, little Bodhi Nang is already a media star. His proud parents got to tell the story of how he was born in 33 hectic minutes. And they received not just one, but two ribbon-decked gift baskets from Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and the nurses, filled with stuffed animals and fluffy blankets.

But in pricey Silicon Valley, where even a Wendy's hamburger costs $2 more than in the Midwest, being born 3 minutes after midnight on New Year's Day -- well, let's just say, it made Uncle Sam happy.

"He could have been a tax write-off" if he had been born just 3 minutes earlier, in 2012, his mom Chialing Wu said, affectionately cradling the 20-inch-long baby boy in her arms.

"She was a math major," father Sethih Nang joked, referring to his 32-year-old wife, who works in customer support for a chip company.

Bodhi's decision to arrive two weeks early is fitting since he was born and conceived in the Year of the Dragon, said his Taiwanese-American mother and native-born Cambodian father.

"The dragon is like the go-getter of the bunch," Nang said.

The baby's imminent birth was discovered by his doctor during a routine medical check-up Monday. His mom wasn't feeling any contractions, but she was already 5 centimeters dilated.

So the couple took their cherubic 3-year-old son Dharani Nang to lunch at a Vietnamese rice-plate restaurant on Tully Road, then swung by their house in the Berryessa area to pick up her overnight bag before heading to the hospital.

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Instead of bringing in the new year by watching the ball drop on TV in Times Square, along with an estimated 1 billion other people, they waited for the baby to drop.

Despite his early birth, Bodhi arrived at a healthy 8 pounds. Bodhi's older brother took 26 hours, also a fitting period since he was born in the Year of the Ox, which, his father joked, means he is a stubborn as one.

The second baby born in the South Bay, a girl, popped out at Kaiser Permanente's San Jose hospital at 12:52 a.m.

Regionwide in the Bay Area, two babies were born in separate hospitals at the stroke of midnight.

One baby, whose sex and name were not released, was born at midnight at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley, hospital spokeswoman Carolyn Kemp said.

At the same time, a baby boy was born at Sutter Delta Medical Center in Antioch, according to a nursing supervisor.